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Even as the fun and games of the Indian Premier League start today, an unseemly and far graver issue of Pakistani cricketers and cricket in general is drawing attention. The unprecedented action taken by the Pakistani cricket board is nothing short of shocking, and if former great Wasim Akram is of the view that this will make Pak cricket the laughing stock of the world, he is not far wrong.

PCB has banned for an indefinite period two players who have long been the mainstay of their team; both former captains Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf. They have also banned/fined/put on probation as many as 5 other players; Rana Naved-ul-Hasan and Shoaib Malik each face one-year bans and big fines.Shahid Afridi, Kamran Akmal and Umar Akmal also face heavy fines while their conduct will be strictly monitored during a six-month probationary period.

This was an obvious reaction to the disastrous Australian tour where the Pak team was humiliatingly vanquished in all formats of the game, returning home having won not a single match. The reasons cited for the extraordinary punishments meted out to the players were ‘indiscipline and infighting’.

The fact is that the latest Pak cricket fiasco has gone on to further isolate the team and the players in international cricket; has more firmly demarcated the chasms that clearly now divide Pak cricket from the rest of world cricket.

When one looks back on the glory days of Pak cricket, which produced, as Mike Atherton memorably said, some of the game's greatest talents, and some of its biggest villains, no one of the personality and caliber of the past greats appears to be part of the current Pak players. The swagger, the charm, the machismo, the never-say-die doggedness that once typified the players; even the glamour that once surrounded the famous Pak players seems to have dissipated. The team at present is a rag tag bunch of talented but disparate individuals who seem to be a mere shadow of their predecessors.

The Pak cricketers in days of yore always displayed aggression, immense if raw talent and an unpredictability that was as delightful as it was startling. When you talk about players such as Imran Khan, Javed Miandad, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Saeed Anwar, these were some of the best players of the game. And though the performance of the teams of past was uneven and mercurial; stellar in parts and dismal at times; it was always a team that was close knit and united and came our fighting each time.

And when you think back to the times of the great Indian Pak conflicts; they were the stuff of heart attacks. No more potently exciting matches than the epic encounters between arch foes India and Pakistan can be recalled in world cricket. This was the most thrilling of rivalries in international cricket; other traditional rivals such as England and Australia seemed positively convivial when compared to the daggers drawn encounters that India-Pak matches inevitably seemed to turn into.

It is a sad day not only for Pak cricket but for international cricket that the controversies that have dogged them in recent times seem simply not to go away: the doping rows surrounding Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Asif; the way the two players came to blows, the mysterious death of Coach Bob Woolmer during the World Cup, the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan, the recent Shahid Afridi biting-of-the-ball case, and various sad stories in between. All this has brought disrepute on Pak cricket and its players have undoubtedly suffered for it.

Pakistan has never lacked talent; raw, aggressive, exciting talents have always emerged from different corners of the country; the main problem seems to be the way Pak cricket is run; PCB seems the main reason for the rot. That, and the lack of charismatic players such as Imran Khan who used to hold together and cement a team.

One can only hope that this is the lowest point in Pak cricket and that hereafter there will be a revival. Because if Pakistan is no longer part of international cricket; it is world cricket that will be the poorer for it.